There are growing demands for mobile Internet access. Conventional computer systems are commonly configured in local area networks. A mobile computer may use a standard PCMCIA network card to connect to the local area network. The PCMCIA network card typically includes a telephony modem that can be physically connected by network cable to a telephone line. Once connected, nodes within the network communicate with one another through air and space using radio, microwave, and infrared frequencies in the megacycle/second or kilomegacycle/second ranges, or through other well-known techniques in the field such as point-to-point laser systems. However, the network cable connection restricts the computers' mobility because these computers need to be physically connected to a “hub” or “port.”
One promising solution for providing network access to mobile computers is the Wireless Network Interface Card (WNIC). The WNIC eliminates the need for network cables, and thus allows for more user mobility. Armed with a WNIC, a node in the wireless network, such as a notebook computer, can be as far as 150 feet away from the rest of the network, depending on the composition and thickness of the walls in the building where the wireless local area network (WLAN) is deployed. The WNIC cards communicate with one another through radio waves, and the transmission rate can be as high as 11 Mbps.
The WNIC works in two modes: infrastructure mode and ad hoc mode. In the infrastructure mode, a WNIC communicates with the network through an Access Point (AP) devices. In the ad hoc mode, the WNIC's communicate with one another directly without using AP devices.
Despite the mobility, nodes equipped with a WNIC still face problems regarding hardware and network configurations. When a mobile computer moves between multiple AP devices, or switches from infrastructure mode to ad hoc mode, the mobile computer is typically disconnected and then reconnected. The mobile computer subsequently needs to be manually reconfigured by the user for proper connection to a new system. Therefore, there exists a need for a method and apparatus to automatically reconfigure the WNIC contained within a computer when the computer moves between AP devices within a network, and/or when the computer moves outside the network to connect to a different network.